Never Too Late Read Free

a little of everything. Sorry for the uninvited advice. Hazard of the profession. I’m afraid I always think I know what’s best for everyone.”
    “No, I appreciate it. Intellectually I know you’re right—I just need more time to adjust. But I’ve never been a particularly patient man and I’m having a hard time trying to figure myself out right now.”
    He paused, uncomfortable talking about this with anyone, but especially with Kate Spencer, and decided to change the subject. “Taylor tells me you’re doing well with your residency.”
    “Right. I just finished an E.R. rotation and on Christmas Day I start one in the neonatal intensive care unit at Primary Children’s Medical Center.”
    He hadn’t been a cop for a while now but even his rusty detective skills could hear the definite lack of enthusiasm in her voice and he wondered at it. As long as he had known her, Kate had been focused on only one thing—becoming a doctor. It had been the strongest tie binding her to his sister, the common ground that had led them to becoming friends.
    “You don’t sound very thrilled about it.”
    “I am. I’ve been looking forward to working in the NICU. I know I’ll gain valuable skills there.”
    “But?”
    She sighed and turned back to the ghostly mountains. “But just like you, I can’t seem to work up much enthusiasm for anything right now.”
    “You’ve had a wild few months, I guess.”
    “We both have.”
    They drifted into a comfortable silence. After a moment, she stirred next to him and he caught the scent of her, that mouthwatering smell of vanilla sugar, and suddenly became very uncomfortable.
    With her blond hair piled up on her head and that slender green dress, she looked elegant and graceful and delicious. He wondered what Dr. Spencer would do if he gave in to his sudden urge to yank the pins out of those luscious curls, bury his fingers in them, and pull her toward him.
    He hadn’t had much to do with women since his release and his body was loudly reminding him of the fact.
    That had certainly been on his to-do list, one of those things he’d dreamed about in prison—sex with a different woman every single day for a month.
    But the reality was, he didn’t enjoy meaningless sex. He’d had plenty of offers since his release from prison but all from the kind of women who didn’t appeal to him at all, the kind who found his dark history a turn-on and wanted to make it with an ex-con, even an innocent one.
    He cleared his throat and tried to figure out how he could escape without being rude.
    “Do you think you’ll take your old job back?” she asked, unaware of his torment.
    If any question could deflate his fledgling lust, it was that one. He stared out into the night. “That’s still one of those things in the undecided column. I don’t know.”
    “You were a good cop, Hunter.”
    “Yeah, I was.” He didn’t say it out of ego. “I loved it. But I have to admit I don’t have much faith left in the system.”
    How could he, when that system he’d worked so hard to uphold had failed him so miserably? Despite an unblemished—even stellar—career with the Salt Lake City Police Department, he had first been arrested and then convicted of taking three lives, one of them an unborn child, one a dying cancer patient and one the woman he thought he loved.
    He would still be in that cell on death row if not for his sister’s unwavering faith in him. God knows, his former buddies on the force had all turned on him. The system of justice he had built his life around had failed him with disastrous consequences, and he didn’t know if he could ever believe in it again.
    And if he didn’t believe in it, he sure as hell couldn’t pick up his detective shield again and take up where he had left off before his arrest nearly three years earlier.
    “So what will you do?” Kate asked.
    He shrugged. “For now, I guess I’ll just stay out here and watch the mountains.”
    She laughed a